Pages

Thursday, December 06, 2012

13th Amendment Ratified

On this day in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, officially ending the institution of slavery, is ratified. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." With these words, the single greatest change wrought by the Civil War was officially noted in the Constitution.

No comments:

Stephen Bess teaches English at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. He enjoys writing and researching African history and literature in the Americas on his blog, Morphological Confetti. He also enjoys photography and travel.

Morphological Confetti:

Top 20 Blogs to Learn about African American History in 2010

I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.Frantz Fanon, (Black Skins, White Mask - 1952, trans. 1967)